Main menu

Category Archives: Internet issues

The recently exposed Twitter Shadow-banning fiasco is one of the most recent and obvious manifestations of Twitter’s slump towards irrelevance. The blatant and obviously political, refusal to verify the account of Julian Assange has been another blatant example.

Exactly who is making those farcical decisions at Twitter? Is it Jack Dorsey? Has he hired some spineless advisors who are controlling the staff making these ill-conceived, random decisions to ban, limit and censor tweeps? Is it possible that he’s so scared to death of being hassled by the U.S. government and others, that he is bending over at the first sign of pressure? What kind of pressure is this? Is it coming from the government or his wealthy peer group? Is it some misguided attempt to broaden his user base by appearing family-friendly? Has someone with serious bucks threatened him with legal action? Why, in Dog’s name, would he think that banning free-speakers would lead to more users or advertisers? Newsflash, Jack, without users, you don’t get advertisers. If you betray your raison d’etre, the very thing that made your platform special, you lose your users.

I suggest that Jack gets this situation under control while he’s still got a business left. I see a lot of people moving on, in the near future – and not merely those of us who have been so charmingly described, by your bizarrely-out-of-touch staff member, as ‘shitty people’.

I am 100% certain my account is being censored. It has become apparent that my account is being kept below 1,100 followers. For at least the last year and a half, my follower count drops to just under the 1,100 mark rapidly, as soon as it reaches around 1,110. This has happened with monotonous regularity, for at least a year and a half, after a steady climb to that follower count. I believe that this is evidence that some shameful algorithm kicks in to stop my account developing and my views being heard. I am certain I am not the only one being subjected to this kind of mechanical muzzling. I’m not paranoid enough to think I’m that note-worthy so there would be millions of other people having the same hand-brake applied to their public personas.

I am proudly outspoken in relation to Syria and the abuses of the Palestinian people by the apartheid state of Israel and I expose sock-puppet accounts which are being run solely to propagandise. I believe that this is the reason my account is being censored.

I think it is quite possible that staff at Twitter are actively furthering the apartheid, Hasbara aims of the Israeli government and are actively assisting them in silencing the #BDS movement along with a lot of other view-points the US government considers troublesome. I have had temporary limitations placed on my principal account and my back-up account, on at least two occasions, as a result of challenging extremely obvious Israeli sock-puppet accounts, the kind that tweet all day and all night, in a manner that suggests that they are either being run by multiple persons, that they’re bots, or that the person controlling them has a serious Adderall addiction. Obviously the latter is the least likely option, though it would explain some of the quality of the intellectual content.

Do yourself a favour, Jack. Kick this one to the kerb. (Image courtesy of RT)

It’s disgusting that the public are being defrauded in this way. We came to Twitter, trusting the platform and believing that our views would be treated equally. Instead the Thought Police in the Twitter office consign our views down the ‘memory hole’ into oblivion as if they’re worthless. This filthy business of secret-sanitisation is not only a gross insult to Twitter’s clients, i.e. us. It’s a major infringement against anyone’s idea of what constitutes free speech.

It’s time for people to vote with their feet and demonstrate to @Jack that Twitter is not as indispensable as he likes to think it is. Those of us who actually have something meaningful to say came to Twitter for all the reasons it was NOT like Facebook, i.e. because it was a place where one could have a boots-and-all discussion, without feeling like we were in a nanny-state dominated by kitty-pics at a teetotaler’s convention. It was a place where you could deal with the serious issues and get honest responses to honest statements, whether you wanted to read them or not. What a great thing that was while it lasted. Those who wanted to travel in the slow-lane stayed on Facebook.

In Jack’s desperation to protect his investment he has lost sight of the reason for Twitter’s popularity. Without credibility as a free speech platform, Twitter is nought but advertising bots and pictures of Kim Kardashian’s bum.

Wake up, Twitter! Wake up, Jack. Sack those half-wits you’ve invested with censoring-powers they have clearly demonstrated they are ill-equipped to handle, for reasons of ignorance (political and moral), immaturity or ego.

Is this happening because you’ve allowed your building to get infested with Israeli Hasbara or U.S. government moles? Is it a pay issue? Are your inmates a bunch of monkeys because you are only willing to pay peanuts?

Twitter has ‘Block’ and ‘Mute’ options. You also have options to limit ‘sensitive’ content (oh God). Exactly how ridiculous do you want to get about this?

I contend that you only have a short window of opportunity in which to fix this before Twitter is scraped into the internet garbage-bin. Technology moves quickly, as we know, so it’s likely there will be no return. All the nannies and polite, vanilla-thinkers won’t save you from that.

Jack, stop censoring and limiting exactly the type of out-spoken, opinionated people who made Twitter interesting in the first place.

Note: I have edited out information from this blog pertaining to various anti-Assange trolling accounts and their associated pernicious web-sites. Disinterest (i.e., mine in particular), the progress of world events and the passage of time have mercifully relegated these individuals and their sponsors to the S-bend of history.

In the side-bar of this site, under the ‘Internet Issues’ category, I have provided links to a number of interesting articles, in relation to techniques including ‘astro-turfing’ and other government and commercial strategies currently being used to manipulate social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook.

Included is information in relation to U.S. Military Intelligence, which is currently using military personnel to run many propaganda accounts on social media websites. A single personnel member can run up to fifty of these ‘sock-puppet’, i.e. multiple, accounts at the same time.

The U.S. Government and other organisations, also contract-employ marketing companies, in various locations around the world, to conduct what is often referred to as ‘persona management’. The U.S. Military and contracted marketing companies, also use multiple ‘metal gear sock-puppet’ accounts. These accounts are operated by software which provides a capacity to present vastly falsely-inflated statistics to support any view-point considered desirable, for example to present an impression that many Twitter account-holders are opposed to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. These accounts also attempt to influence public opinion by the use of propaganda, smear, false information and polemic.

Catch-phrases and profanities are programmed into ‘metal gear sock-puppet’ software to add authenticity and create an impression of a human operator. Some are programmed to pick up on key-words such as “Israel”, “Palestine”, “Assange”, “Wikileaks”, “Trump, “Clinton” etc. The intention behind these accounts is to chip away at public opinion and/or the credibility of government detractors and activists, as well as to gather intelligence about opposition groups and individuals. Conversely they can be used to encourage support for persons or agendas.

Multiple ‘sock puppet’ accounts are currently being used to attempt to damage the credibility of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, by spreading false information and to falsely inflate the perception of opposition.

During the lead-up to the 2016 Presidential election, it was apparent that there was an army of these accounts, attempting to bolster support for Hillary Clinton by discrediting WikiLeaks and personally, Assange, who was perceived as damaging to her electoral prospects. Hindsight suggests these fears were not ill-founded. I have no proof that this tactic was used in the Clinton campaign but my close observations of twitter traffic over many months and years. It appeared to me that twitter was a virtual sock and bot war-zone at that time. I don’t think too many people who had been closely watching the twitter-show at that time would disagree that it was highly probable the Clinton camp and their financiers were engaged in this activity. These activities dropped off drastically, immediately after the election, even before Hillary Clinton had begun licking her wounds and brow-beating John Podesta.

Many of the anti-Wikileaks accounts are multiple “sock-puppet” accounts, being operated by the same paid employees of marketing companies, whose bills are being paid by entities such as the U.S. State Department. Some of these accounts belong to actual people, however misguided, who are operating multiple accounts for the same purpose. Many of these Twitter accounts tend to ‘follow’ each other and it is often easy to spot a single operator is using multiple accounts. With most of them, their follower support appears to be pathetically limited, even with the multiple account holders following them.

Often it is easy to spot who is operating the same accounts by which accounts pop up together to verbally harass anyone commenting in support of Assange or seen contradicting an anti-Assange troll. This reminds me of how animals puff themselves up to make themselves look bigger.

I have noticed that there are a large number of dormant trolling accounts which have been set up and appear to be waiting to be used. These accounts often retweet a few WikiLeaks and other tweets, to give an impression of authenticity and attract persons interested in WikiLeaks, so that they can then mislead them, manipulate their opinions and identify other targets through time-lines and follower lists.

My purpose in raising awareness of what appears to be, on the surface, a pathetic and somewhat innocuous activity, is to demonstrate, particularly to young people, the mendacious tactics governments and individuals indulge in to manipulate the public and blind us to the truth. This type of activity is symptomatic of a greater disease inflicting the internet community. The only process which can excise these tumours is to shine a light on them before they metastacise into more pernicious lies and worse, events.